So this past Sunday, I did a food and wine pairing at Cellardoor Winery in Lincolnville, Maine. It’s a gorgeous vineyard with a stunning farmhouse, tasting room and dining area that makes you feel like you must be in California wine country. But we’re in the beautiful state of Maine. With delicious wines. I love this place. I was very excited to be cooking some bites to pair with their wines for their regular pairings on Sundays.

Sauté onions with butter in large saucepan over medium-low heat until they begin to brown, about 45 minutes. While the onions are cooking, cook the bacon until it’s just shy of crisp, you want some “bend” to remain (about 80% done). Then add to the onions, adding some of the grease, but not all. Then stir in remaining ingredients and simmer on low for about 20 minutes. Taste after about 10 minutes. If it’s not sweet enough, add sugar. If it’s not tart enough, add more Balsamic. If you want more mustard for more of a savory kick, add more. This is where you cook to your taste! Blue Cheese Butter (I used Gorgonzola) 8 ounces of blue or Gorgonzola cheese 1/2 stick of butter Let cheese and butter sit at room temperature to soften. Mix with paddle attachment in stand mixer or food processor (or by hand!) until well combined. Baguette slices (fresh or baked until crisp) Top with blue cheese butter and a spoonful of bacon jam. It’s a perfect couple of sweet-savory bites! But we all agreed, pair it with a nice bold, fruit forward red!

Oh, and by the way, the other two bites were Maine lobster…….stay tuned for those recipes!

A favorite of any of my guests, family and friends! It’s a layered version of a cheese filled blintz, served with mango puree, blackberry coulis, rhubarb puree and raspberry coulis! How’s that for foodporn? In The Art of Breakfast!

Anyone who follows me knows that I like to use the torch in the kitchen. So I decided to burn some marshmallows to infuse. That’s where it started. There are marshmallow flavored vodkas out there but I wanted to try making my own, but with my favorite Maine spirit, Twenty 2. I like a good Bloody Mary now and then (think I learned that from my parents, thanks mom and dad!) and most of all, I love citrus and basil. Oh and let’s not forget about the sweet and spicy cocktails, so I had to do a spicy infusion!

The last five need another day or two and I’ll post about those later!

For those of you who have me figured out, you realize I’m all about the images. I try not to get too wordy in my posts. I like to let the photos speak for themselves. But this post has a story to it, one that has to be told in its long version to be appreciated.

I started with this toffee recipe back before I bought a bed and breakfast in Maine in 2004. It fact, made it several times, successfully. So when we bought the inn, I thought I’d make it as my thing, to put in the candy dishes in the rooms every day. It would become my signature candy, no commercial candies for me, it had to be homemade. So one day I got out my trusty candy thermometer (the same one I used before when making the toffee) along with the other ingredients and started making toffee.

Let me first preface the rest of the story by saying DO NOT MAKE TOFFEE AT CHECK-IN TIME. Repeat, DO NOT MAKE TOFFEE AT CHECK-IN TIME. My kitchen was open to the guest entrance (which I loved) so in walk some guests to check in. I’m standing over my pot of melted butter and sugar in its light golden stage of yumminess. I tell my guests that I’ll just leave the mixture on low while I give them the tour and show them to their room. They even offer to wait until I’m done (maybe they had more sense than I did given that I was using a candy thermometer- pretty serious stuff). But NO, DON’T WORRY, THE CARAMEL IS STILL IN THE VERY EARLY STAGES AND NOT EVEN READING 200 YET (it needed to reach 290)…so off we go. You can see where this is going. After a few minutes upstairs I begin to smell smoke. I run downstairs to the kitchen and the caramel in the pan is as BLACK as ASPHALT and smoking the house up. Thankfully the smoke alarms didn’t go off (my guess is that because Summer in Maine is gorgeous we leave all windows open almost all Spring/Summer/and part of Fall. I ran outside with the pan so that it could continue to smoke OUTSIDE and not INSIDE. Baking is supposed to make the inn smell good, right? The rest of the checkins that day heard my “don’t assume the smell of burned food will be what’s to come in the morning, please!!!!” and they all laughed.
Over the next year I attempted to make toffee again, promising NEVER to leave the pan unattended again. I followed the recipe exactly. Removed the mixture from the heat when the thermometer read 290. But it still looked too pale to be done. But I followed the recipe. After a handful of attempts and trashed toffee, I bought a new thermometer. This time, a fancy digital thermometer.

So it had been a while before I decided to try making toffee again. But now that I have a new thermometer, I was confident. But this time I had just been given a gift of a box of See’s Peanut Brittle, I think it was just before the holidays, and we happened to have a little snow on the ground. If you haven’t tasted See’s brittle, GO ONLINE and BUY IT NOW, it’s just amazing. Or maybe you shouldn’t because you could become addicted and be in my predicament of trying to create it at home…So the primary difference between brittle and toffee is baking soda and/or cream of tartar, it some how changes the texture just slightly.

I get all of my ingredients out, new candy thermometer and I decide to make brittle. I follow the recipe (except I used too small a saucepan but couldn’t have imagined that would matter)…WRONG. Candy making tip: DO NOT ASSUME WHEN MAKING CANDY. Repeat: DO NOT ASSUME WHEN MAKING CANDY. When it comes time to add the baking soda at just the precise moment, I add it and am prepared to stir quickly as the recipe reads, but I wasn’t prepared for a big VOLCANIC ERUPTION from my 3 quart saucepan. Fortunately my kitchen door was only 15 feet from the stove, I ran with the erupting saucepan outside and leaned over the porch rail JUST IN TIME for the blobby bubbly brown mess to pour over the edge of the pan and plop onto the beautiful WHITE SNOW. This brown blobby mess hardened in the once white snow immediately, AT OUR INN’S FRONT ENTRANCE, looking like someone had a bad case of the stomach flu (oh dear what if our guests thought it was from my breakfast?) My husband tried to remove the hardened candy from the snow but it wasn’t as easy as he thought. So he covered the mess up with more snow. Out of sight, out of mind…so the blobby mess sat beneath a winter’s worth of snow. By spring there was no sign of it. That was my FIRST and LAST attempt at making brittle.

So YEARS LATER after we sold our inn…I decide to get the almonds out of the pantry and right away my husband knew where I was going with this. He said “uh oh”, but right away I said “no, you know what, I’m making my original toffee and I’m NOT going to rely on the thermometer. I know what color it should be.” And that’s exactly what I did. I used both thermometers just to verify what I thought all along, that my eye knew what would be right. The thermometers gave an inaccurate reading. And many chefs do things the same way, by touch, taste, appearance, smell, using the senses. MY TOFFEE TURNED OUT PERFECTLY DELICIOUS WITH JUST THE RIGHT TEXTURE.

SO HERE’S THE RECIPE with my coconut twist:

3 cups whole raw almonds (you can buy them already roasted but I prefer to roast my own)
2 cups shredded coconut
2 sticks butter
1 tablespoon water
1 cup white sugar
6 tablespoons corn syrup
1. roast almonds and coconut on sheet pan in oven on 300 degrees for about 15-20 minutes. Let them cool.
2. chop the nuts in a processor – stopping halfway to reserve about half the mixture leaving some larger pieces, then continue to pulse into small pieces.
3. put butter in 3 quart saucepan (we’re not adding baking soda so this size is adequate!) and add the water, corn syrup and sugar and heat to melt over medium heat.
4. Once melted, bring mixture to a boil over medium high heat, stirring with heatproof spatula occasionally for about 10 minutes (here is where the recipe calls for heating to 290 degrees) but I say heat it until it JUST gets to the right color of toffee (camel brown) and then remove from heat.
5. immediately add the large chop nuts and half of the small chop nuts and quickly fold to combine. The mixture will harden quickly.
6. spread onto parchment lined sheet pan with an offset spatula or heatproof spatula to the desired thickness.
7. top with 2 cups of chocolate chips (I prefer semi-sweet but you can use milk chocolate or a combination), let sit for a couple minutes, then spread the melting chips over the toffee.
8. top the melted chocolate with the remaining finely chopped nuts and let sit at least a few hours at room temperature. When completely set, break into pieces and store in an airtight container. Freezes beautifully!

This was one of the most surprising and requested recipes we served at the inn, probably because of its simplicity and the health benefits of oats. It was surprising as many people who don’t typically like oatmeal really enjoyed this because of its cake-like texture. I even kept pre-printed cards with the inn’s logo and recipe at the checkout desk in anticipation of the request! Give it a try: you just might convert some oatmeal naysayers like I did.

Pour the mixture into a greased 9×13 glass baking dish, cover with plastic wrap, and chill in the refrigerator overnight.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove the dish from refrigerator and allow to sit while oven is heating.

Bake uncovered for 30 minutes, until lightly brown on top. Cut into squares, place in shallow bowl, and top with a good amount of the Vanilla Cream, a nice drizzle of the Rhubarb Sauce and garnish with some fresh sliced strawberries.

This freezes and rewarms in the microwave beautifully. Kids will love it for a healthier breakfast!

Cook the rhubarb, water, and sugar in a medium saucepan, covered, for 20 to 25 minutes until soft. Remove from the heat and puree with an immersion blender until smooth. Serve immediately or let cool and refrigerate until ready to use. Warm in the microwave before serving. This can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 3 days or in the freezer for 4 weeks.

As a new Gojee contributor, I was invited to the Gojee Potluck Dinner at their headquarters in New York City on January 12th. Unfortunately I am not able to make it. But this is what I would have brought with me if I did! The combination of cherries with chocolate, a touch of chocolate Balsamic and the flaky puff pastry crust is just delicious! Starting on Thursday, January 26, check out other potluck dishes fellow gojee contributors shared. Go to gojee.com and enter “gojeepotluck” into I Crave. You can also follow #gojeepotluck on Twitter

Chocolate Cherry Cordial Tart

Wonderful as an afternoon treat with coffee or tea.Add a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream or frozen yogurt and you have a perfect dessert.

2. Mix the pitted cherries with the sugar, port,
balsamic, dissolved arrow root powder, and cocoa
and put into medium saucepan. Cook over medium
heat until sauce comes to a boil. Remove cherries and boil
sauce 2 to 3 minutes longer to thicken. Remove from heat and
place cherries back into sauce and allow to rest.

4. Spread the softened cream cheese on the pastry. Spread the chocolate shavings
(or chips) evenly over the cream cheese. And using a slotted spoon, place the
cherries in a single layer over chocolate.

I am fascinated by the challenge of converting fruit ideas from my cookbook into the late afternoon cocktail hour. This creation was inspired from my favorite Grapefruit Brûlé with Vanilla Bean Crème from the fruit course chapter of my cookbook. It came about from the allowing the torched grapefruit to sit for quite a while – there was a leftover half and after a couple hours, I saw the juices on the plate that mixed with the vanilla sauce and the crunchy sugar top so I tasted the juice and a new cocktail was born!

Rim the martini glass with a piece of grapefruit and dip into a plate of dark brown sugar

Add a small handful of ice to a cocktail shaker

Squeeze 1 large ruby red grapefruit into the shaker (it yields about a 3/4 cup)

Add 1/2 cup vanilla vodka (I used Pinnacle, they’re in Maine)

Shake vigorously and serve in the brown sugar rimmed glass. Garnish with a slice of the ruby red grapefruit and enjoy!

Chop fresh pineapple, red onion (small dice), jalapeño (tiny dice), cilantro, a squeeze of lime, dash of salt and a drop of the juice from the pineapple and let the flavors meld for a few hours. Serve with corn and flour tortilla chips and guacamole and enjoy!